Losing the High Road?
By Delia Gallagher
The war in Iraq has put into high relief questions about the Catholic Church's position on the conflict. The Holy See's opposition to the war has caused some Catholic thinkers, such as Americans George Weigel and Michael Novak, to question whether the Vatican promotes a «functional pacifism» which, according to Weigel, «retains the intellectual apparatus of the just war tradition of moral reasoning but always comes down, at the bottom line, in opposition to the use of armed force». They also question the Vatican's insistence on the authority of the United Nations given that the latter is sometimes ineffective and in opposition to some Church teachings, for example, on the family.
These Catholic American intellectuals have been frequent guests at Vatican conferences arguing for renewed thinking of the Church's position on war. A European critique of this American position was provided recently by a professor of social ethics at the Gregorian University during an April 29 conference on Catholic thought and world politics, in the presence of a number of Americans, including Weigel and the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Jim Nicholson.
Professor Antonio Baggio opened his talk quoting U.S. President George Bush speaking in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. «They hate our freedom», the president said, «and they used it to attack us». What is this freedom on which America is based? Baggio asked. Since the founding of the United States, he suggested, freedom has been intimately connected to fraternity.
He quotes Thomas Jefferson's 1823 letter to James Monroe criticizing Europe as «nations in eternal war». Jefferson wrote: «On our part never had a people so favorable a chance of trying the opposite system of peace and fraternity with mankind and the direction of all our means and faculties to the purposes of improvement instead of destruction». Baggio noted that the Declaration of Independence states that, «out of decent respect for the opinions of mankind», the 18th-century Americans hastened to explain to the world the reasons for their actions.
«The Declaration», said Baggio, «confers on mankind an enormous weight: invoking it as witness to the rights it declares, accepting mankind as judge of its duties. The decisions taken by the people must be shared by that humanity that the people themselves call to stand in judgment of its motives». Baggio quoted Thomas Paine, in «Common Sense»: «The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise which are not local but universal and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected and in the Event of which their Affections are interested».
Such a history, Baggio claims, is at once an opportunity and a danger for America. «The danger is that of maintaining that the United States is the better part of humanity, and feels itself authorized, because of this, to decide alone and for all», he said. «After September 11th», he said, «the United States had a historic opportunity to become effectively the moral leader of the world, unleashing a world strategy of freedom in fraternity».
Instead, Baggio claims, the Bush administration went in the opposite direction. «The disagreement of a large part of the international community with President Bush began when he thought that the United States could decide on its own that which involved everyone», Baggio said. «It is even more worrying that the general vision of the Bush administration regarding the global project they intend to pursue is in direct contrast with the vision of the Catholic Church», he added.
The Catechism, the professor noted, treats the argument of war under the article entitled, «The Fifth Commandment: You shall not kill». The subheading is then entitled, «Safeguarding Peace», and finally the argument on war entitled, «Avoiding War». «Beginning with the structure in which the Catechism presents the arguments, it is evident ... that there exists on the part of the Catholic Church a preliminary negative judgment regarding war», Baggio said.
The professor takes issue with what he considers to be neo-conservatives' narrow interpretation of the Doctors of the Church. «An important limit of the neo-conservative interpretation of the doctrine of just war», Baggio said, «is that it does not take as its central perspective the search to avoid war, but concentrates instead - because conditioned by the present historical moment and, perhaps, by a patriotism that tends to rationally and ethically justify the choices made by President Bush - exclusively on that which makes war acceptable.
«They refer to the doctrine of peace and war of Augustine and the Scholastics, whose reflections on the conditions of just war is only a part of their doctrine, that which regulates the exception. In the vision of these classical scholars, beginning with Augustine, the norm and the very sense of their doctrine of just war lies in the search for peace». Baggio cited Augustine's letter to Dario, «The greatest title of glory is that which kills war with the word, instead of killing men with the sword and to procure or maintain peace with peace and not with war».
ZENIT Daily dispatch - The World Seen from Rome
13. mai 2004